Saturday, March 17, 2007

Over on BGG, a cool simple idea was discussed: Create a card for eachgame you own, and use it as a sort of "card catalog" of your games, oreven as a way of deciding of what game to play. Tom Kiehl made href=http://www.superpowernosissies.com/games/idkwdywtp/>a very cooltool, that was href=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/153521>extensivelydiscussed. It automatically generates these cards from your BGGcollection.

An example sheet of 4

Unfortunately, the cards are less image focused than I'dwant, and I wouldn't want to deal with printing on labels and applyingthem to some other material for hundreds and hundreds of games. So, Idecided to write my own card generator, with some changes.

Just the Knizia games in my collection

First, I made the image as large as was plausible, automaticallyrotating the image if that would allow it to be larger. The only textinformation I wanted on the card was game name, number of players,time and designer(s). I also wanted to be able to override the gamename, not just the game image. Finally, I wanted them inexpensively,and in full high-quality color. So, I decided to print them four to a"page" and have the pages printed as 4x6 photos from Costco. I endedup having to do a fair amount of cutting, but less than applying 600+stickers. Overall, the result is very cool. Having one's entirecollection "in hand", physically, with all games being equal is usefuland fun.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Ok, my daughter doesn't actually play many games, but she thinks shedoes. She can really play "Go Away Monster!", fully by the rules.Heck, she even teaches other people the rules. She gets that one.But for most games, she really means she wants to play with the pieces.

She has a few favorites, such as Zick Zack, Gulo Gulo and Konig derMaulwurfel (which is really cute to try to hear a two-year-old say),but she enjoys Chess, Plumpsack, Cartagena, Sambesi, Dawn Under,Hamster Rolle, Kayanak, Villa Paletti, Face-It and a variety ofothers. Even if she's not quite there in terms of the rules of mostof the games, she understands the meta-game. She'll say "Let's play adaddy game!" and we'll proceed to peruse the shelves and she'll say"How about this one?" or "Maybe Gulo Guolo?" until we settle onsomething. We'll set it out, play with the pieces and clean it up.

But, the absolute icing on the cake is what she's taken to sayinglately when we're playing games. She'll turn to me, look me in theeyes, and declare "Daddy, I love playing games with you." I loveplaying games with her.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Fourteen yearso ago, I wrote the first web spider, back when the webwas small. It was called the Wanderer. Based off of it, I wrote thefirst web search engine, called "Wandex". It was not very good, butagain, the web was small. Within a year, numerous better web searchengines appeared. But, I am proud to have had the opportunity to befirst.

In the years since, I started a web analytics company, earned twodegrees, joined a hardware startup, and started a wireless locationcompany. Now, I have come full circle. In February, I started workat Google in Boston. The first month has been great and it's aremarkable company.

Personal

Professional

I am a Engineering Director at Google. My team and I work on Search.

Previously, I was the CTO at an 802.11 location and security company, Newbury Networks in Boston. In June, 1999 I received my Masters degree from the MIT Media Lab. I graduated from MIT (undergraduate) in June, 1997, in physics. Prior to that I was CTO of net.Genesis from 1994 to 1996.